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Korean Artists Showcase Environmental Concerns @ Opera Gallery

“Elements of Nature,” which recently opened at Opera Gallery, brings together three Korean artists bound together by their interest in the environment.

While Kim Chang-Young and Chae Sung-Pil both used sand and soil to create semi-abstract barren landscapes devoid of human figures, Lee Gil Raeconstructed forests of steel, capturing this rapidly depleting resource for eternity.

Kim mixed sand and oil to create impressions of sandy beaches moved by tides or howling winds, and the works only hint at human presence with footprints sometime left behind in the sand, as fading memories of our passage on earth.

Paris-based Chae also created barren landscapes using soil, but did so to express his own nostalgia and longing to go back to his homeland after many years of living abroad. The artist has collected soil from different parts of the world and mixed them to create his own “paint” before using a ‘spilling method’ of water drips to form his landscapes.

Meanwhile Lee constructs leafless trees with intricate curves and notches made up of steel and copper pipe with sprawling branches fanning out and tipped with wisps of copper representing the needles of the old pine trees. With rapid deforestation his trees narrate the artificial nature of today’s city dwelling.